The Kataii Ambush
|side2= |commanders1=Koschei Kharkovic K'awil Pakal |commanders2=Daer'dd Niimkiikaa |forces1=(To be added) |forces2=(To be added) |casul1=(To be added) |casul2=(To be added) }} The Kataii Ambush, also called the Death of the Bear, was an ambush by Insurrectionist forces in which the Godslayers and the Grave Stalkers assaulted the Iron Bears and their allies over the capital of the Ghoul Stars, Kataii, on the Day of Revelation. Of all the battles fought on the Day of Revelation, this was the most bitter, with the loss of much of the VIth Legion's command cadre alongside their Primarch, Daer'dd Niimkiikaa. Background Infamy On the Day of Revelation, the blades of insurrection fell upon every Legion loyal to the Emperor, but the Sixth would be wounded more deeply than any other. The Iron Bears, with their great technological power and potent mortal allies, had been identified from the start as one of the greatest threats to Icarion’s seizure of power. One of the most formidable Legions, they boasted great technological prowess, a redoubtable pocket empire and an impressive roster of allies integrated into their line of battle. Knights marched into battle at their behest, and their realm of the Three Fires - or Tricendia in High Gothic - had given them not only several Army regiments but the Daughters of Daer’dd, who ranked beside the vaunted Solar Auxilia and Icarion’s own Rakurai cohorts. Icarion did not need his foresight to understand that if he did not eliminate the Bears on the Day of Revelation, they could provide a stumbling block on his road to Terra. Even with the presumed cooperation of Alexandros and the subsequent seizure of Terra, the Bears’ realm of the Three Fires might become a bastion for the Loyalists, especially in conjunction with the Dominion of Mycenae. Moreover, it lay adjacent to Icarion’s intended route to the Sol System, and he could not countenance such a powerful enemy on his flank. Daer’dd himself would be a fearsome enemy, beloved of the common soldier and one of the few Primarchs Icarion could not be certain of defeating in combat. Thus Icarion moved to eliminated him, setting the stage for the Day of Revelation’s most infamous battle. Knowing the power of the Bears and their mortal allies, he assigned not only the Godslayers to this task, but the Grave Stalkers and the sinister Lasarine Mechanicum. Their treachery was to be enacted over the planet Kataii. This was a subsector capital, insignificant in the Imperium’s sense-defeating sprawl. Events, however, would give it an immutable place in history. The Blades Readied For nearly two decades prior to the Day of Revelation, three Legions - the Iron Bears, Berserkers of Uran and Grave Stalkers - had been leading the thrust northwards, deep into the Ghoul Stars, along with fleets of Drowned and Eagle Warriors for several years. In this region, resistance was murderous indeed. Dozens of grotesque xenos and abhuman breeds ensured that this brutal front took decades to push forward. Therefore upon the Day of Revelation, unlike in some theatres of the Great Crusade, the fighting was far from over, with some tacticians estimating that it could be as much as another two decades before the Ghoul Stars could be declared conquered. This was the reason for the Iron Bears' presence over Kataii. The bulk of the VIth Legion was engaged in the Ghoul Stars and had recently completed the extermination of the Orks of the Kayvas belt, a collection of nearly 40 worlds. However, as in the broader Crusade, there was still a great deal of fighting to be done in the Ghoul Stars. Their next assignment was a region known as the Angel’s Horns, recently scouted by Rogue Traders and expected to require four years’ fighting to secure it. It was daunting enough that Daer’dd called upon the vast majority of his Legion, nearly 130,000 Legionaries along with the bulk of their allied Army, Knight and Titanicus units. Kataii was to become a forward base of operations for the VIth for at least the coming campaign. It was also supposedly for this reason that the Godslayers and Grave Stalkers were joining the Iron Bears' muster over Kataii. K’awil and Koschei were apparently at odds over the broader campaign’s course, with the former wishing to press on into adjacent sectors and the latter intent on consolidating recent conquests. They sought to confer with Daer’dd in order to establish a coherent strategy, and it was for this reason that their allies’ bulk transports halted at Euryd, the small world with which Kataii shared its sun, while the Legion fleets moved on toward the core planet. In truth, the Grave Stalkers and Godslayers had arrived with the purpose of slaughtering their cousins, and these more vulnerable ships would be a distraction. When the Godslayers and Grave Stalkers translated, the Iron Bears were arrayed in a standard Imperial resupply anchorage pattern, with many of their largest vessels anchored about Kataii's void port, directly above the docks on the world itself. Strike cruisers and smaller battle barges were anchored around the largest vessels in tight knit formation to allow easy travel between vessels, while the very smallest ships were positioned in picket squadrons on the outskirts of Kataii's gravitational field. As the Godslayers and Grave Stalkers moved closer, they kept their intent hidden, exchanging vox-hails with their cousins as if all was normal. Permitted to pass by the picket squadrons, the Insurrectionist fleet sailed on through the void towards the main body of the Iron Bears fleet. It was then, as the Insurrectionist fleet's vanguard was moving into orbit above Kataii and the fleet's main body was just an hour or so away from joining the Iron Bears in orbit above Kataii, that the Primarchs of the three Legions met via hololith for a preliminary strategic conference. In truth, it is likely that Daer'dd simply wished to converse with Koschei, a brother he had not seen in decades. During this meeting, Daer'dd unwittingly gave his two brothers strategic information that would prove useful, when they made the last-minute alterations to their battle plans. Amid the exchange of pleasantries, Daer'dd revealed that only 100,000 of his sons were actually with him over and on Kataii. A further 30,000 had been delayed by Warp turbulence and was expected to arrive in a trickle over the past days, although the furthest out were still four days away. Of more immediate use, Koschei and K'awil discovered that nearly 6,000 Bears were not in orbit at all. Instead, they were on Kataii itself, amid the world's docks, overseeing the transfer of supplies into orbit and surveying facilities which might be of use to the Legion in the long term. This was by no means a glorious task, but necessary. More pertinently, it would shield these Astartes from the initial onslaught in the void, and give them time to prepare for an assault. This raised the ominous prospect of Bears evacuating from their ships to the planet, where their legendary terrestrial arsenal would make it far more costly to wipe them out. As a preemptive measure, eight Brotherhoods of the Godslayers deployed to Kataii's docks, supposedly to prepare for their own resupply operations. As the Godslayers spread out among the sprawl of gantries, warehouses, and docking stations, a force of 150 Grave Stalkers discreetly deployed to the main structure of the docks, the vox relay centre. Meanwhile, the Godslayers and Grave Stalkers fleets had moved into high anchor alongside the unsuspecting Iron Bears. Some Godslayers elements had even boarded Iron Bears vessels under the guise of wishing to see old comrades. The Iron Bears had no idea of the peril. As the final adjustments were made to the Insurrectionists formations, weapons batteries were powered up, boarding pods loaded into torpedo tubes and the Legionaries of the VIIIth and XVth Legions checked their weapons and armour a final time. The Knife in the Back The first act of betrayal was a shot fired from the plasma pistol of one Sergeant Ivan Vladislavich, a warrior of the Godslayers 6th Brotherhood, on board the Iron Bears strike cruiser Heart of Iron. It felled Captain Roanilas of the Third Grand Wartribe, known to history as the first Legion casualty of the battle of Kataii. With the surrounding Iron Bears still reeling from the shock of this crime, the other members of Squad Vladislavich followed suit. Once the Legionaries and Daughters on board the Heart of Iron were dealt with, the Godslayers moved to the bridge, seizing control of the strike cruiser and killing any of the mortal crew and Army soldiers who resisted. Then, with the blood of former comrades darkening on their gauntlets, they turned the guns on the nearest ships. All across the daylight side of Kataii, the same scene played out, Godslayers and Grave Stalkers turning on the Iron Bears apparently apropos of nothing. The VIth Legion fleet, brought into close proximity to Godslayers and Grave Stalkers vessels by the pattern in which the Insurrectionists had anchored their fleet, were raked with fire from lance batteries and could muster only sporadic retaliatory fire, with most Iron Bears ship captains being too shocked to effectively respond. To add to the confusion, many of the Iron Bears vessels began to also turn their guns on the rest of the VIth legion fleet, seized by the Godslayers. Aboard several of these, crew attempted to retake control of their ships, but proved powerless in the face of the traitors. Quite aside from their weapons, the boarders held the controls of life-support systems. These were quickly turned off where mortals were deemed a serious hindrance, condemning them to a slow demise. In these opening minutes of the attack, tens of thousands of Astartes died, while the mortal death toll soared into the millions. The Iron Bears had been caught unawares, with their shields largely deactivated and none of their crew in battle positions. The only exceptions to this were the picket squadrons, removed from the main body of the fleet and so out of the way of the main betrayal. However, like every other ship in the Iron Bears fleet, their vox was now flooded with the sounds of ship and Astartes captains requesting orders, answers or simply demanding a halt to the madness. And along with that, all the cacophony of slaughter. On the bridge of the Iron Bears flagship, the vast Dragon of Autumn, Daer’dd could only watch and listen in horror. He tried to establish contact with his brothers, whose flagships were firing on the Dragon of Autumn, yet K’awil gave no response and while contact was established with Koschei, the only response the Primarch of the Godslayers gave was to say “Forgive us” before breaking contact. The losses sank in, the toll growing with every heartbeat. Vessels - not just warships, but troop carriers with no weapons capable of meeting such attackers - burned, gutted with exacting accuracy and thoroughness. Before Daer’dd’s very eyes, a mass conveyor as large as the Dragon was torn open, condemning almost a million soldiers of the Huronian Sunstriders to death in flame or the cold void. Sixty kilometres away the Claw of Dusk, flagship of the Fifth Grand Wartribe and the jewel of Oamura’s shipyards, was dying, bleeding atmosphere and molten metal into the void. Voidcraft spilled from its hangars, yet most were run down and destroyed before they could reach another ship. Lord Chief Logan Drake, a comrade to whom Daer’dd had entrusted the command of a Wartribe, felled by honourless cowards. Horror turned to anger. Daer’dd issued an order across the vox, over the screams of dying ships. His Legion was to break out of the trap, flee the system and regroup with the ultimate goal of reaching Huron. The Dragon’s shields were lit, followed by the rest of the fleet. The rate of destruction slowed, but already enemy Astartes had made their way aboard followed and were killing thousands of mortal crew. Daer’dd led his Totem Guard and other favoured companies to confront them, leaving the void war to his shipmistress Lotara Sarrin, who engaged the Insurrectionists with all the ferocity and skill for which she was renowned. Where before it had been a slaughter, with the Primarch’s order given, battle was truly joined in the void above Kataii. Recovering from the initial shock of the ambush, the Iron Bears fleet began to fight back with some semblance of organization and strategy. Dozens of vessels, their names too numerous to list here, sacrificed themselves in desperate rearguard actions, allowing other Iron Bears ships to disengage, regroup and fight back as ad hoc squadrons. While the Iron Bears continued to fall in numbers never before seen by the Legiones Astartes, they no longer died without knowing why, unable to take some measure of revenge. The first recorded ship kill made by the VIth Legion was the Grave Stalkers light cruiser Hidden Shadow, its engines destroyed by fire from the Dragon of Autumn in the twentieth minute of the battle. Within a minute the leviathan had consigned two more vessels to oblivion as it cleaved through space, its lessers sailing in its wake. The armed complements of many doomed vessels, rather than staying to die with their ships, launched themselves at Insurrectionist ships in an attempt to board them. While many of these boarding pods were destroyed, hundreds more slammed into their targets. Fuelled by their fury at the betrayal, these Iron Bears who succeeded in boarding Insurrectionist vessels wrought butchery upon all they found until they too were slain. A few boarding parties succeeded in purging smaller vessels of all key personnel, but even when they withdrew their safe return was uncertain. Many more fell aboard the vessels they attacked, and the last words of those aboard Grave Stalkers ships were often of strange, hitherto unseen automata wrought by the magos of Lasaris. One notable boarding action was that fought by Sergeant Enoch Awanjish and multiple squads of Iron Bears stationed on the frigate Iron Soul. Surrounded by four Godslayer ships, the Iron Soul was dying, bleeding its life out into the void and so the Iron Bears and Daughters launched themselves at the Godslayers battle barge Absolute Brotherhood. Twenty one of them reached the ship and when they did, they fought their way onto the bridge, Awanjish clearing their path with his thunder hammer. While they were eventually all brought down, they killed more than half the bridge crew, and brought down more than their own number of Godslayers. Already, dozens of adamantine carcasses drifted, gutted, through the void, the bodies of their crew freezing in the vacuum chill, and still the battle over Kataii continued. Rain of Iron The first that anyone on the surface of Kataii knew of the betrayal taking place in orbit was when it began to rain metal. As the Iron Bears fleet was ripped apart in orbit, the shattered and twisted metal from the carcasses of those ships that were destroyed lower in orbit began to fall down to Kataii's surface. Some smashed into the cities of Kataii, killing millions, others into Kataii's mountains. However, the vast majority of these ships carcasses came crashing down onto Kataii's port. The fury and heat of their reentry incinerated the bodies of anyone caught in the open, Astartes and mortal alike. However, the Godslayers had known to take cover in the storage chambers underground beneath the docks. The Iron Bears and their allies had not, and so many were caught out in the open, crushed and incinerated by the hundred along with thousands of civilians. Like their comrades in orbit, they began to roar out requests for orders into the vox, struggling to be heard amid the cacophony. However, no matter how loudly the Iron Bears roared into the vox, they received no answer save for deathly silence, for their requests never even reached the ears of their Primarch in orbit nor even their officers in the docks. Treachery had drawn a veil over the world as impenetrable as the pall of ash and smoke that loomed overhead. While eight Brotherhoods of Godslayers had been deployed to the docks to engage and destroy the Iron Bears on the ground, only a small force of Grave Stalkers, most from the XVth's destroyer cadre, had joined them. Unlike the Godslayers, the Grave Stalkers had a very specific task: seize the vox relay centre and destroy it without word reaching the anyone but their allies. It is a grim testament to the skill of the Grave Stalkers who carried out this action that so little is known about it. A handful of Huronian troopers reported finding dead Imperial Army troopers and workers at the vox relay centre. They noted that they had been killed in one of two ways: a knife through the back or with their necks broken. This was a hallmark of the XVth’s methods; quiet and chillingly efficient, killing and moving on before a scream or gunshot could prompt alarm. Moving through the facility, the Grave Stalkers seem to have spread out immediately, killing any who could discover and inform their superiors of the destruction of the vital machinery within the relay centre. Only a small number seem to have continued on to the heart of the relay centre, destroying several parts of the vast network of circuits and broadcasters needed for the relay centre to function before taking cover for when the ships' carcasses began to fall. In the confusion caused by the lack of any long range vox communication, the individual groups of Iron Bears were forced to act on individual instinct. Where other Legions' first instinct would be to find cover, the Iron Bears first thought was not of themselves. Instead, it was of the suffering around them. Their immediate reaction was to lead or carry as many of these people as they could to some form of shelter. Thousands of mortal lives were saved, but at a gruelling cost to the Bears. The fighting on the ground that followed this initial rain of debris was even more chaotic than that in the void above Kataii. Certainly, the coordination of the traitors, that had served them so well in the early stages of the battle, vanished. Some emerged from cover too early, rising up to the surface to find the metal rain still falling and suffering heavy losses for their misjudgement. Others emerged too late to find that the battle was in full swing, the element of surprise lost. However, those who emerged as the initial wave of falling ships was beginning to slacken found the Iron Bears in disarray, their vox all but useless and many of them blinded by the burning fragments of metal that laced the air, having neglected to wear their helmets or lost them in the initial chaos. In addition, the Insurrectionists still had the advantage of surprise. The Iron Bears had no idea of what was transpiring in orbit. The Insurrectionists did. With full access to fleet tactical networks, armed for fratricide and in some cases supported by dreadnoughts and automata, they began to sweep through Kataii's dock complex, butchering any Loyalists they came across. Perversely, it was the chaos of the ground war's opening moments that saved the Iron Bears. Amidst the confusion, many units had splintered as their members saved those mortals they could and sought cover for their charges. Thus when the Insurrectionists emerged from cover, large units of Iron Bears were nowhere to be found, only small, scattered groups. Even as the deluge gouged the city, the Iron Bears had realised that this could only be hostile action. Therefore, they decided that those Legiones Astartes elements on the ground needed to regroup and try to reestablish contact with the fleet or, failing in that, prepare for a ground invasion. There were two locations these Iron Bears moved towards to regroup: the docks' spaceport or the vox relay centre, with most making their towards whichever was closest. On their way, some of these survivors ran into their Insurrectionist counterparts, through these encounters discovering their treachery. Those Iron Bears who reached the spaceport found a grim tale awaiting them. Those who had arrived before them had established contact with the fleet, more specifically the Dragon of Autumn, one of the only ships whose own vox transponders were powerful and operational enough to be reached. The Dragon of Autumn dealt a thousand deaths with every salvo, but its shields were straining under the intolerable beating it sustained from its enemies. Dozens of ships had been destroyed or disabled in the opening moments of the betrayal. Seeing that no help could be expected from orbit, the Iron Bears began to prepare the spaceport’s defences for a test they had never been designed for: assault by another Legion. By contrast, those Iron Bears who made it to the vox relay centre found only bloodshed. When they had believed it safe to do so, the Grave Stalkers emerged from the bunkers beneath the vox relay station to find the Iron Bears who had taken cover there. In short order, fighting had broken out between the two, the Grave Stalkers uncaring of the mortals they cut down to reach the Bears. In the blood-spattered and firelit confines, the battle became a sprawl of hand-to-hand combat, the VIth Legion's tomahawks against the XVth's knives and the claws of their cyborg allies. As broken Iron Bears vessels continued to fall out of orbit, several Godslayers vessels peeled away from their squadrons and began to move towards the Kataii Orbital Port. It was around this monolithic structure that many of the Iron Bears' largest ships, including the Dragon of Autumn, had been anchored and many of Kataii's orbital defences were located here. From these ships, hundreds of Caestus Assault Rams launched, each one making straight for the Orbital Port. Each of these assault rams was packed with Godslayers, equipped for the rigours of a boarding action in the Orbital Port's winding, narrow corridors. Their one objective that we can be certain of was to take hold of the Orbital Port and in doing so seize its anti-ship batteries to be used against the Iron Bears, or at least neutralize them. However, while the Stormborn had expressly ordered that the Dragon of Autumn be destroyed, it has been argued that this assault constituted an attempt to capture the Iron Bears flagship and the other capital ships, any of which would be a major addition to the Godslayers fleet. Whatever their true objective, hundreds of craft slammed into the Orbital Port and from them poured thousands of Godslayers, many of them veterans of a hundred sieges. However, when they smashed their way into the Orbital Port, in many cases they did not find their path unopposed. Many were showered with volley after volley of las fire shortly after stepping foot inside the Orbital Port and this riposte came from not from mere militia or Army troopers, but from soldiers of the Solar Auxilia 918th Cohort. The “Star Serpents”, resplendent in green and white livery, were themselves the veterans of decades campaigning in the Ghoul Stars, and they stood firm in the face of their attackers. It is universally acknowledged that to fight a Legionary with any hope of success requires another Legionary or potent combat-automata. However, while it was known that they were far and away superior to unaugmented non-Imperial human troops, it was not yet realised just how outmatched the troops of the Imperial Army - even the elite Solar Auxilia - were by the warriors of the Legions at the time of the Day of Revelation. While it had never been imagined that the two might meet in battle, the likely outcome was easy enough to anticipate - a massacre. Legion void warfare was ferocious, beyond even that practiced by the Solar Auxilia. It is a testament, then, to the valour of Marshal Solar Iri’idus Marzas and his Star Serpents that they were undaunted by these odds. In the tens of thousands, they deployed to to stall the Legions amidst the Orbital Port’s passageways. However, the Auxiliaries’ las weaponry had to be wielded en masse to breach the Astartes’ warplate, and while their Rapier turrets and volkites proved more potent, these were too few to halt the tide. By contrast, the Space Marines’ guns and blades were virtually unimpeded by the armour of the mortal soldiers. The attackers lost scores of warriors, but the toll was exceeded a hundred times over by the Star Serpents. The Solar Auxilia were not the only Imperial forces to meet the Godslayers in battle in the Orbital Port. Whereas many of their still living brothers had remained aboard their ships, a number of VIth Legion Dreadnoughts had disembarked from their vessels to the Orbital Port with small honour guards of Bears and Daughters. It is worth noting that next to none of these dreadnoughts came from the larger ships of the Iron Bears fleet, meaning that in all likelihood they had needed to board the Orbital Port to obtain repairs that the forges of their own vessels were unable to provide. This theory is given further credence by the fact that many of them were missing weaponry or seemed to have parts of their ironform which were malfunctioning at the time of the Battle of Kataii. However, each of these warriors was still a dreadnought, quite capable of wreaking carnage among their traitorous cousins. Now they emerged, flanked by the Mechanicum troops who guarded the forges. With their living brothers dying in unprecedented numbers and the Tricendian Auxilia being massacred in vain attempts to hold the Godslayers at bay, the living dead of the VIth Legion joined the battle. As the Godslayers pursued the retreating Solar Auxilia through the Orbital Port, they were confronted by these giants. Quite abruptly, the Godslayers ceased to be the butchers and became the butchered, as when Ancient Acona made his stand at gate 34-A. Both of Acona's legs were so badly damaged that he could barely move, but his Kheres assault cannons remained lethally intact. He fought with all the determination the revered fallen possessed, mowing down squad after squad as the 19th Brotherhood attempted to dislodge him. Worse still for the attackers, his stand gave a Sub-Cohort of the Star Serpents a point around which they could rally, forming ranks to add their own fire to his. Without Acona they would have been swept aside, but in the Ancient’s shadow they had the armoured corpses of Godslayers for cover, and their massed las-fire found the breaches he made in the warplate of their attackers. A similar incident has become known as the Charge of the Broken. In Spineway 3 of the Orbital Port, elements of Sub-Cohorts Quintus and Tertius had engaged the Godslayers 28th Brotherhood. While they put up as much resistance as they could, inevitably the Solar Auxilia were being forced back with heavy casualties. The Godslayers pursued them, halted only by the appearance of Ancients Aertemes, Ivar and Maakdewa with their retinue. They had heard the desperate calls for reinforcements from the Solar Auxilia along the Spineway and raced to respond. As with all the Dreadnoughts on the Orbital Port, they lacked certain capacities, Ivar having even lost his artificial sight in the Compliance of Gareen. Nonetheless, when they charged into the Godslayers, they were deadly, ripping or blasting them apart in the dozens and forcing the warriors of Zbruch into retreat. Through such feats of courage, guile and endurance, the Loyalists kept a hold on the great guns of the station. Directed by Artificer Bakgii, they put these ship-killers to full use and hammered nearby traitor vessels with lances and plasma. More than a stubborn objective, the Orbital Port became an active danger to the Godslayers, hampering their attacks on the beleaguered Iron Bears and savaging their own vessels. VIIIth Legion ships joined the corpse-hulls spinning in the void, and smaller guns staunched the flow of enemy reinforcements. However, despite all these efforts, the Godslayers eventually prevailed. Reinforced with their own Dreadnoughts, they pushed up the Spineways and towards the docking facilities, bringing down over seventeen dreadnoughts, mostly with melta fire and krak grenades or melta bombs. In the case of Maakdewa, however, the Godslayers made their kill at great cost with power weapons and chainfists, Captain Igor Ivanovich finally dragging the revenant from his Lucifer sarcophagus. With victory in their grasp, the Godslayers fought their way into the immediate vicinity of the Port’s docking spaces and the remnants of the 21st and 33rd Brotherhoods commenced a boarding action against the Iron Bears battle barge Oamura’s Fire. Seeing the danger to the few vessels of the VIth Legion that remained docked, in most cases due to extensive damage caused in the opening moments of the battle, Iri’idus Marzas issued his final order over the vox: all the surviving Loyalists were to seal their armour against the void - Dreadnoughts being proof against such hazards - and his own troops were to hold the Godslayers in place and prevent any escape. Marzas then had the tech-priests overload the Orbital Port’s gravitic engines, the very devices that kept it in orbit. The result was a catastrophic explosion which swallowed much of the central port and sent many of the combatants flying out into the void, killing most of the surviving Solar Auxilia, either through the immediate explosion or exposure to the void. However, this terrible price was one the Marshal Solar was quite willing to pay. His actions killed thousands of Godslayers in the explosion and cast others out into the void freeze. More importantly, those Iron Bears ships still docked, deprived of an anchorage, went crashing down to Kataii’s surface, killing millions but denying their use to the traitors. Below, the outraged militia and garrisons deployed across the world, even turning the surface-to-void guns of the main hives upon the Insurrectionists. The governors and some commanders might have given their fealty to Icarion, but their underlings had other ideas. Their attempts to target Insurrectionist ships were hampered by the density of vessels in orbit, but this was an unwelcome development for the traitors which would likely necessitate the use of terrestrial forces. But quite abruptly, this was forgotten as the Bears seized the initiative. The Bear’s Rampage Just as battle was raging in the void all around them, an equally vicious struggle was being fought in the bowels of the Dragon of Autumn. As the Iron Bears flagship, it had been the prime target not only for the weapons batteries of every Insurrectionist vessel within range but also for numerous Insurrectionist boarding parties. While those aimed at the bridge and upper levels of the Dragon of Autumn had been blasted apart before they even got close, many that had been aimed at the ship's lower levels had slammed home to disgorge their deadly payloads. As a result, rather than going on the offensive and boarding the Insurrectionist, Daer'dd and his elite Totem Guard were forced onto the defensive, a role they were relatively ill suited to, as were all Iron Bears. It is said of many armies that they are more dangerous with their backs to the wall. Such forces inflict more casualties upon their enemies in battles where their death is all but assured than they ever would otherwise. Most assuredly, a Legiones Astartes is such a force. With their backs to the wall, the Iron Bears fought with desperate savagery and recklessness rather than, for example, the Fire Keepers' cold wrath and stony determination. Such a difference might be insignificant enough against another opponent - the Legions being trained and equipped for all modes of warfare - but against their cousins it was a telling weakness. Here lay the masterstroke of the Kataii Ambush, not in the deployment and coordination of the Insurrectionists, but in forcing the Iron Bears to fight on the back foot and in such disorder. It was this defensive posture that they were forced to adopt that was partly to blame for the high Iron Bears casualties compared to those suffered by the Insurrectionists in the early battle when compared to other battles of the Day of Revelation. Reduced to reacting to their enemy's movements, seemingly unable to control the tide of battle and moreover enraged by the betrayal, many Iron Bears vessels and their crews hurled themselves at the Insurrectionists in brave but ultimately doomed charges. The Insurrectionists responded with countermeasures already devised and rehearsed, and those Bears who gave in to the urge to attack were cut apart systematically. While the Grave Stalkers largely refrained from boarding actions, it is clear from data-logs that when they did commit, the targets were typically the Titans and Knights allied to the Iron Bears. On those ships that berthed these engines the Grave Stalkers came for the bridge crews and vital systems, either in bleak silence or depraved shrieking. The disorder among the Iron Bears intensified as ships they sought to guard fell silent and unresponsive. Counter-attacks were attempted, but by the second hour only two Titan-carriers and a House August conveyer had been retrieved, and the most that the Bears could hope to achieve was blasting apart the remainder and denying them to the foe. Foulest of all, on one vessel the Grave Stalkers captain aboard fled the coming of the Bears, into the bowels of the ship his company had attacked. Activating a cluster of vortex grenades, he and his retinue caused an engine-breach which scoured the ship’s insides, killing thousands and condemning a proud War Maniple of the Legio Auris to ignominious death. In a hundred such atrocities, the Grave Stalkers inflicted destruction which far exceeded their numbers. Only the skill and resolve of fleetmistress Lotara Sarrin and the officers under her command saved the Iron Bears fleet from utter destruction. Steadily and painfully, Sarrin pieced the Iron Bears fleet back into some semblance of order and united action, reduced as it was. Under her command, it began to make a fighting withdrawal towards the system’s edge. The Dragon of Autumn and other juggernauts made up the rearguard, loosing volley after volley to deter their pursuers. As his shipmistress coordinated the Iron Bears' withdrawal, Daer'dd himself had been hunting Grave Stalkers and Godslayers in the Dragon’s lowest levels alongside his Totem Guard. While the fighting had been fierce, few Legionaries could stand against these elite warriors. Against the wrath of a Primarch, that number dwindled to none. In the speed with which the Insurrectionists had prosecuted their boarding actions a terrible realisation had come to the Primarch of the Iron Bears, confirmed by the discovery of a holo map of the Dragon of Autumn on the body of a Grave Stalkers officer. The ambush, the massacre of his sons, had been planned with exacting precision right down to their boarding procedures. It was no outbreak of madness, but likely part of some greater scheme. Finishing the hunt in the flagship’s depths, Daer'dd returned to the bridge and gave his shipmistress new orders. No matter the cost, they were to engage the Godslayers and Grave Stalker's flagships while as many of the fleet as possible fled the system. While his fleetmistress attempted to reason with the Bear, he would brook no disagreement. From the highest praetor to the lowliest menial, these were his people being killed, and he would not sacrifice them for his own safe passage. Worse, K’awil and Koschei had broken all compacts of brotherhood, and only their blood would answer for such treachery. So it was ordered, so would it be. Turning around from its withdrawal, the Dragon of Autumn plunged back into the Insurrectionist fleet, flanked by its escorts and the cruisers Bear's Blood and Huron's Heart. Lord Chief Lakestrider of the Third Wartribe was left to lead the majority of surviving ships to safety, trusting to Daer’dd’s action to keep them from the worst of the attack. Taking full advantage of the Insurrectionists’ surprise at such an apparently suicidal charge, the flagship and its fellows carved a bloody path for themselves with their guns until finally, the Dragon of Autumn was exchanging lance fire with the Grave Stalkers’ flagship, the Eye of the Void. K’awil’s ship was a masterwork by the Lasarine Mechanicum, a unique ship fearsome in aspect and equipped with stealth systems that defied replication. Its weaponry was also impressive, far exceeding most ships of its class, but in open battle it was no match for a Gloriana battleship. The Dragon was exceptional even among those monsters in power, and under Sarrin’s direction it twisted and cleaved through the escorts of the Eye of the Void, the sword of a blademaster dispatching his foes. It alone reaped six ships - destroyers, frigates, a cruiser - yet never lost sight of its true target, Sarrin using the Dragon’s momentum to bring it alongside the Eye of the Void. The daring attack had its price in VIth Legion ships, but now the Dragon was upon its target and loosing broadsides, bursting its shields and cratering the corpse-grey armour beneath. His shipmistress' duty complete, Daer'dd, his Totem Guard and several more companies teleported aboard the flagship of the XVth. With wrath boiling in their veins and vengeance in their hearts, this assault force mauled their way through the vessel's halls. Lasarine Adsecularis only slowed them for seconds. Vorax automata swarmed him, lesser predators attacking an alpha beast, and he made scraps of them. Not even a force of Grave Stalkers veterans, led by one of their Legion's few Dreadnoughts could halt the Bear and his Totem Guard, with Daer'dd tearing the ironform limb from limb and dragging its pilot's ruined body out onto the cold metal of the ship's floor where he left it to die, twitching and cold. The Bear's rampage was only halted when he was confronted by his target. K'awil Pakal had moved to intercept his brother, bringing a guard of some 200 Reapers - the damned warriors of the XVth, dead men walking each and every one. It is said that in the dim light of the ship's corridors K'awil smiled, an ugly expression more akin to rigor mortis than any true mirth. Without a word, Daer'dd charged K'awil, who leapt to meet him with a wordless shriek. The Astartes charged in their wake. The two forces met with the dull clang of ceramite on ceramite, a sound which the galaxy would come to know all too well as the sound of betrayal. To see Daer'dd fight K'awil was to see a battle of opposites. One the one side Daer'dd, striking with great hammer blows and on the other K'awil, darting in and out with his twin blades, inflicting small wounds and retreating, even as the Reapers leapt at Daer’dd, several evading the slower Totem Guard in their frenzy. However, there was no escaping the fact that in open combat, K’awil was grossly overmatched. So, while he held out a great deal longer than any other foe the Iron Bear had faced, he was eventually felled, smashed aside with a hammer blow to his already torn chest. Such damage was ruinous even for K'awil's superhuman body and the Soulless fell, his face mangled by Daer’dd’s fangs. But before Daer'dd could finish his kill, a new combatant intervened. Koschei Karkovic, who had teleported aboard with his elite companies, interposed himself between Daer'dd and K'awil. If words passed between them, they have never been recorded. Many maintain that Koschei pleaded for forgiveness, even as he recognised there was no turning back. Daer’dd’s rage would only allow this to end with one of them dead. With power fist and dagger Koschei charged his brother, and when his dagger broke in Daer'dd's gauntlet he took up one of K'awil's blades. Mighty though he was, this was a battle Daer'dd could not win. Weakened from his battle with K'awil, he slowed. His blows became easier to block, his openings easier to exploit. The autocannon bound to Koschei’s power fist widened the breaches in his armour. Finally, Koschei brought Daer'dd to his knees, even as Daer'dd hauled him into an embrace that broke bones and crumpled his Terminator plate. Koschei tore at his wounds and unloaded his cannon at point-blank range, lacerating Daer'dd's hearts and lungs until life fled his body. A Primarch was dead, and nothing would be the same. The Brink of Extinction During the Great Crusade it was often said that a Legion, once united with its sire, would not survive his loss. One could not exist without the other; the logic seemed self-evident. The psychic energies bound within the Emperor’s sons were loosed, wreaking chaos among his sons on the Eye of the Void. Where confusion had reigned before, now there was raw havoc and blood-blind rage. The change mastered the Bears aboard and they fought heedless of anything but their fury. Elsewhere the damage was less immediate and profound, but ruinous nonetheless. The control that Lotara Sarrin had managed to maintain over the VIth Legion fleet was greatly weakened by the news of their Primarch’s death. Dozens of ships broke ranks and simply charged forwards, guns blazing, seeking to wreak bloody vengeance for their father. The violence Daer'dd had wreaked upon the bodies of his brothers may well have been all that saved his Legion from annihilation. Koschei was withdrawn by teleportation to the Krylataya Pobeda, wracked with the emotional trauma of his crime, while K’awil was taken to the Apothecarion. The Godslayers’ flagship now took the place of the limping Eye of the Void, while the dreaded Prime K'uhul Ajaway took charge of the Grave Stalkers from the ancient Dark Sovereign. With that, the Insurrectionist fleet fell upon the Bears’ broken formations, seizing on every weakness with unerring, pitiless accuracy. With Daer’dd fallen, command of the Iron Bears passed to Therox Cass. A former Legion Master, he had served as Lord Chief of the Fourth Grand Wartribe since the reunion. Now disaster thrust the mantle of command upon him again, and with him Chief Praetor Achille Nibaanisiiwi. A senior captain of several decades’ service, Nibaanisiiwi had earned a reputation for a taciturn bearing, matched by his skill in battle and a level head. Upon the latter, the fate of his Legion now rested, for he was one of the few officers aboard the Eye not consumed by his rage and grief. The Dragon of Autumn would not survive unless more warriors could be brought back to defend it. As Cass and Sarrin tried to rally the fleet, Nibaanisiiwi gathered any VIth Legion warriors he could, seeking to retrieve Daer'dd's body and any surviving Totem Guard. At Cass' direction, he was reinforced by additional companies led by Captain Roanoke. They were sent only to aid him in his mission, for there was no hope that they could capture the Eye of the Void and survive. To many of the Bears already aboard, the odds were below their notice, their minds given over to the hunger for revenge. The Grave Stalkers and their Lasarine allies, however, led by the Ancient Manik’chul, now outnumbered and outmatched them. From every corridor they came, a vice closing on the VIth Legion warriors. By the time Nibaanisiiwi secured his sire’s body, the fighting had deteriorated into brawling among and upon the piles of corpses. Finding warriors from other ships who had boarded the Eye of the Void, Nibaasiniiwi and his captains brought back those they could, but were forced to abandon hundreds to whatever grisly end they might find aboard the ship. The wave of Daer'dd's death broke hardest upon the Bears’ shamans. Attuned to the aether as they were, they had felt their father’s death most keenly, the psychic backlash only worsened by the storm of fury and loss that followed. Almost to a man, they forsook all control of their abilities, killing indiscriminately. Some were abandoned when they proved impervious to reason, but others were forcibly restrained by their fellows. One such case was that of Daer'dd's adoptive brother, Aandegg Niimkiikaa, who was stunned by his guards and brought back to the Dragon of Autumn. Only a scant few of the remaining Iron Bears vessels held the rearguard strung together by Captain Sarrin, often those captained by veterans of the Great Crusade. Holding their formation, they managed to fight a way out of the ambush, punching their way through the outer traitor cordons and managing to enter the Warp, although many sacrificed themselves to give their brothers that chance. More would be devoured by the Empyrean's capricious tides, their vessels too badly damaged to survive the journey. Many ships evacuated all the personnel they could, hurling them into the void in landers and gunships in the hope that some would reach another ship. If nothing else, better these craft be destroyed than seized by the enemy. Following their example, there were several more breakouts by hastily thrown-together formations of Iron Bears vessels, notably the Dreaded Claw, a vessel carrying some 400 of the Iron Bears who had been deployed to the surface and fought free. However, such successes were just a small part of the battle. Many more Iron Bears vessels were destroyed than escaped, their hulks left gutted in the void, doomed by their own rage. While lesser forces might have given up in the face of annihilation, the Iron Bears were Astartes and as such fought to the last breath of the last warrior. Yet such bravery could not carry the day and, after a battle that had lasted five hours, the VIth Legion had been scattered to the solar winds by the Insurrectionists. Death's Tally As the last of the escaped Iron Bears hauled themselves into the Warp, the time had come for their betrayers to count the cost on both sides. The warfare that had raged in the orbit over and upon the surface of Kataii was a new and brutal way of fighting, the Imperium’s deadliest warriors and weapons turned upon one another. To us, the crimes and scale are familiar - uncounted billions live now who have been reared on our recent and terrible history. At the time however, such losses among the Legiones Astartes were almost unheard-of. Only the most terrible battles of the Great Crusade - Rangda, Stengah, Chimenak - had ever carried such a murderous price. The Day of Revelation, in which these were inflicted on every loyal Legion and coupled with the unthinkable betrayal, was a blow whose force cannot be overstated. The mauling taken by the Iron Bears was enough to drive any Loyalist to despair. Even in the immediate aftermath of the ambush, when the only reports of it were from scattered bands of exhausted survivors, it was apparent that the damage done to the VIth verged on the irreversible. Casualties and material losses were grimly calculated. Such estimates hammered home the shock, tallying 65%-75% of those gathered over Kataii as casualties. In some units, notably the Totem Guard, casualties were much higher, but no Grand Wartribe present at the ambush survived as anything other than a theoretical concept, scattered and hounded as they were. Indeed, even as these casualty records were being compiled, the butcher's bill of Kataii was not yet complete. For weeks after the ambush, the Godslayers and Grave Stalkers combed the surrounding systems for survivors, butchering any they found. In addition, more Iron Bears were entrapped, for their fleet had been scattered by the Warp when it arrived in system over Kataii. Most were warned by their brethren, but even weeks after the battle Iron Bears ships were still translating into the system, unaware of the massacre that had taken place and the killers waiting for them. Others still would arrive in what they thought to be safe havens only to be blasted out of orbit by worlds that had sworn themselves to the Stormlord. A year later, the death toll of Kataii and the Bears’ subsequent flight stood at 112,000, a loss of Astartes exceeding any other battle in Imperial records. Added to the butcher’s bill were millions of mortal troops, scores of vessels. Vast troves of the Legion’s renowned war machines were lost or worse, in the hands of the enemy. The Behemoth’s Stride, flagship of the Second Grand Wartribe had successfully led the first breakout and forced a passage back to the Three Fires, but not without cost. At the height of the battle that raged aboard it, Lord Chief Ezibiknh had been slain by a Grave Stalkers Moritat. Of the VIth Legion lords who fought here, only Lakestrider would survive to see their home with living eyes. The losses were worsened by the fact that in so many cases, it was impossible for the gene-seed of the dead to be recovered and their deaths made fruitful. This was an especially cruel blow to a Legion known for its prolonged conversion processes, which persisted even as the Legions cast aside many prohibitions on accelerated Ascension. Many thousands of aspirants would perish in the rebuilding effort due to the hazards of these procedures, but even then it would be a full mortal generation before the Bears could sally forth in any great number. Unknown to the Loyalists, the gene-seed of the fallen Iron Bears had been scrupulously collected by their killers. In the main it was intended for cultivation and implantation, but substantial amounts were also given over to the Warbringers' Asklepian Order. A final insult to Daer'dd; the experiments he had worked to end were now fuelled by the genetic material of his murdered sons. As for the two Legions responsible for the atrocity, their losses are more difficult to discern, for we are forced to rely on datacores which had long been concealed from Loyalist eyes. Indeed the Grave Stalkers kept much of their records from the other Insurrectionist Legions even at this time. We can be sure, however, that the XVth had borne a disproportionate share of the Iron Bears' fury. They lost nearly 2500 Legionaries according to their own records, which also admit to another 600 captured or missing (likely from boarding Iron Bears vessels which later escaped). Considering their small size - although it is believed that they had greatly swelled their numbers from the time of the Qarith Triumph, as detailed elsewhere in this work - their losses were steep indeed. In addition, XVth Legion Apothecarion records place the losses of their Reaper cadre in the region of 2,500, likely around three quarters of the mutilated killers. Accurate figures for the Lasarine taghmata have never been obtained, but their losses are believed to be proportionate to those of their allies. The Godslayers too bore a steep price for their fratricide. They had lost 27,000 warriors killed with another 7,400 missing or taken prisoner, likely under similar circumstances to the missing Grave Stalkers, making for a total of nearly 35,00 Insurrectionist Space Marines lost. Under any normal circumstance, such losses - a full fifth - would have considered catastrophic. But in this context the Godslayers had got off lightly, as unlike the Grave Stalkers and Iron Bears they were able to recover much of their fallen warriors' gene-seed. The losses were attributed in part to the unexpected VIth Legion presence on the surface and the Orbital Port, which had drawn assets away from the original core objectives. Kataii was scarred deeply, with the death toll from the fallout estimated at 16,000,000. The subsequent mutiny that swept through its garrison saw a further 600,000 deaths as the Insurrectionists reasserted control, and a regiment loyal to Icarion had to be put in place to keep Kataii under his thumb. Still, this turn of events had been unexpected, and Governor Silonius was allowed to keep his position, as penal hives were erected and filled to repair the damage and restore Kataii's productivity. Desperate to redeem himself in his masters’ eyes, he and his cronies became tyrants, driving their people mercilessly to meet the demands of the Insurrectionist war effort. The Iron Bears’ allies suffered commensurately with the Legion they served. Of the 153 Titans that the Legio Auris boasted prior to the Insurrection, scarcely a third survived to stand against the Traitors, and most of these had been on garrison duty within the Three Fires. It is reckoned that another 20 were claimed as war spoil by the Traitors and given over to the Legio Mortis, who had long despised the Tricendian "upstarts". It is unknown whether they were offered first to the Godslayers’ allies in the Legio Fortissimus, but Kharkovic’s writings make clear his distaste. A handful of Knights from Houses August and Blintrubas were also seized, some along with their pilots. These warriors might have hoped for death, but at the hands of the Grave Stalkers they were denied any mercy. Instead they were handed to the Magos of Lasaris, who took relish in humbling those who had enjoyed such exceptional status. Broken in body and mind, they became the Hollow Knights, enslaved to those who had murdered their kinsmen. When this became known it stoked fesh rage and anguish in their kinsmen and the Iron Bears, who vowed to end this abomination and punish those responsible. Mortal personnel, military and civilian, resisted violently even after being taken prisoner. As it was deemed more difficult than it was worth to try and turn them, they all met one of three fates: slave labour, servitor conversion or simple execution for the most grimly determined. The Martian Magos who served under the Bears were offered clemency, and it is said that a small minority accepted these terms. Most, however, chose to join their Tiricendian fellows in resisting to the last. Navigators were taken alive wherever possible, though some died simply from proximity to the Grave Stalkers. As for the slain Iron Bears, their weapons and armour were scavenged along with their gene-seed. By Kelbor Hal’s writ the renegade Mechanicum would make no attempt to analyse or imitate the technologies of Huron, but it is likely that Lasaris flouted his edict. The Grave Stalkers took trophies both practical and charnel, while Koschei forbade his warriors to take personal spoil from their vanquished foes. It is conjectured that a small number of companies flouted his command, for Godslayers were later encountered wielding Huron-pattern blades and guns in small numbers. Such wargear as could be salvaged, both from the Astartes and their mortal auxilaries, was dispatched to Madrigal with a message from Kharkovic: “By such deeds as these we bloody our hands, for the dream of a better dawn.” Despite the Godslayers’ legendary stoicism, it is not hard to discern misery and resentment for the act they had been set to perform. Leaving aside the steep losses inflicted by the Bears, the act of betrayal scarred the Legion’s collective soul. The psychic backlash of Daer’dd’s fall afflicted the murderer’s kin as well as the victim’s, and some have speculated that the presence of the Pariah K’awil twisted this, deepening the stain on Kharkovic’s soul. The Grave Stalkers had paid a gruesome toll for the victory, but their mordant spirit warded them against the kind of psychological fallout which harrowed the Godslayers. K’awil emerged mutilated and with his grim aura amplified, but there is no evidence to suggest that this diminished him in the eyes of his sons. Taking ample spoil from their defeated enemies and gaining greater resources through Icarion’s favour, the dark legend of the Grave Stalkers was set to grow far beyond their previous infamy. Category:D Category:Day of Revelation